Tuesday, April 12, 2011

In a stunning move indicating total incompetence, the USDA is considering cutting crop reports. The USDA crop reports and forecasts are important, because they reduce volatility in the agricultural commodities markets. Making beef, pork, chicken, corn, wheat, oranges, and everything made with them not subject to huge price fluctuations. This makes food prices stable in the US. Obama has decided this is a bad thing, and wants to re-introduce widespread hunger back to the US. You didn't think the First Black President wasn't going to cost, now did you? Along the lines of "you might want to think about a trade-in" to a citizen complaining about high gas prices, Obama is not even trying to provide any economic buffers or patronage beyond his core group of College Educated White voters. Part of that is incompetence. The other, his corrupt Chicago way, with no pretense at ever giving up office.

Men are what they are, in terms of experience, character, behavior, and more, by their late twenties certainly. Obama is what he is, and he's not going to change. Not going to moderate his behavior, move to the center, or do anything but double down on all the things that have been rewarded in his life: White-baiting, race-card playing, corrupt deal-making, and more.

The WSJ reports:

﻿The U.S. Department of Agriculture may eliminate a range of crop reports watched by farmers, commodity traders and foreign buyers to gauge supplies coming from the world's largest grain producer.

An agency official confirmed the USDA may cut its weekly progress reports that track the development of corn, soybeans and other crops, among other possible cutbacks. Some form of cutbacks is a forgone conclusion, with department officials scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss a list of reductions, said Jacqueline Moore, head of the field crops section for the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, in an interview.

Driving the expected cuts in USDA data is a broad push in Congress to reduce government spending. Funding issues already have led the U.S. Census Bureau to announce it will stop publishing closely followed soybean processing data.

Less data from a government source could mean increased volatility in prices and greater power for the large grain companies that have a unique view of supply and demand most farmers, traders and analysts can't replicate. Prices for agricultural commodities have swung wildly in recent years, with corn surging more than a 100% since last summer to set record highs this week.

The crop progress report that is being considered for elimination gives details on planting rates, crop development and harvesting. The USDA also is looking at cutting back on its June crop report, which gives a clearer picture of how many acres farmers planted of various crops. It follows a March report that also gives plantings estimates. For the June report, the USDA might curtail the amount of surveying it does to reduce costs, Ms. Moore said.

...﻿Still, Dan Basse, president of advisory firm AgResource Co. in Chicago, said the USDA reports provide vital data for a breadth of market participants. Without such reports, the market would revert "back to the 1970s, when three or four major grain companies had all the information, and the rest of us are on the outside looking in."

Mr. Basse and other analysts are lobbying the USDA not to cut the reports. He said in an interview that the USDA was considering cuts to a variety of other reports as well, including cattle, pigs and nuts.

Angry about high gas prices? The man chauffeured everywhere by the Secret Service says buy a new car. Let them buy Prius! Don't like high food prices? Maybe you're just too fat, a starvation diet would be good for you! No one should be surprised by this.

Obama has no experience with executive patronage. People expect results, out of executives. For coaches, its wins. Even the most respected and long-tenured coach can get canned when he does not produce wins (see Tennessee Titans ex-coach Jeff Fischer, formerly the lengthiest tenured NFL coach active). That requirement to produce results holds for mayors (low crime, good quality of life are musts), governors, and yes, Presidents. The President is expected to win wars as quickly and as decisively as possible, with as little loss of US life as can be managed. The President is expected to keep gas and food prices low, and job creation and wages high. Why? Because these more than any other affect the quality of life for Americans. Loss of a great many young men, even volunteers, leaves an aching void never filled for family and friends. Rising costs of living, and stagnant or worse job creation and wage increases mean regressing into poverty, and real hunger.

Obama does not know many ordinary White people. He is hostile, invariably, towards them, when he gets away from his teleprompter. Think Joe the Plumber, or Cambridge cops, or guys complaining about high gas prices. Obama further, acts like a wealthy Black rapper, ostentatiously displaying wealth, consumption, and glitz. Like Jay-Z touting Courvoisier or J Crew. This display goes over very well among Black audiences, whom Obama has courted his entire political career. It means "I made it, and I am more powerful than average Whites." It certainly is understandable for a group historically denied any real achievement, and before that enslaved. But the attitude of a Black rapper displaying his wealth and power compared to average Whites is not a fit one for a President. Yet Obama does that, constantly. Like let them buy Prius.

His action in cutting USDA crop reports and forecasts is typical pique. Certainly something you'd expect from Maxine Waters. But what works for Maxine Waters, or Jessie Jackson Jr., fails for a President still presiding over a White-majority America. Average White people don't like being both hungry and insulted by a Black Marie Antoinette.

Since when has Obama embraced budget-cutting? Shrinking government (besides Defense?) Cutting government jobs?

This is merely another fit of anger aimed at White voters. His people were warned, amply, and further government efforts to increase transparency are what Obama and his Congressional allies touted in Dodd-Frank regulation of financial companies and transactions. Considerable effort has gone into regulating specifically commodities trades, and contracts. Yet here, Obama and his people propose to make the market more volatile, more opaque, and more expensive to the end consumer who will be voting in 2012.

Already Obama has provided the Republican slogan: "You Might Want To Think About a Trade-in." He does not care.

If Obama can keep the margin to around, say 15% points, then he can cheat his way to victory. This is the guy who got elected first by using lawyers to disqualify his mentor from the ballot. Who used lawyers again to open up Rep. Ryan's divorce records, to reveal he wanted to go to swing clubs with then-wife, actress Jeri Ryan ("Seven of Nine" on Star Trek Voyager). Obama was making corrupt deals with then Gov. Blagoyevich even as he was President-Elect. Obama's house was paid for in a corrupt deal involving a former Saddam Hussein bagman. His political advisers include Rahm Emmanuel (current Mayor of Chicago) and the brother of the previous Mayor. Meanwhile Obama's entire being is wrapped up in being President. He can no more be an average person (his whining to the Press to the contrary) than Jay-Z wants to give up being famous and go work on ranch in Wyoming. Obama lives for giving big speeches with lots of applause and laughter, for celebrities fawning over him, for jetting around in Air Force One and riding in armored limos and Marine One. His wife's entire purpose is to be both the national scold (Chief of the Food Police) and Substitute Oprah. Taking glamor vacations every month on the taxpayer dime.

Obama doesn't plan to even attempt to produce favorable results for the American people. He doesn't know how, is uninterested in learning, and could not anyway learn enough to do anything significant. So he'll be more of what he was before he was President. All Presidents (even or especially Lincoln) are that way. Andrew Jackson was merely more ornery, FDR more social-engineering, grand-alliance building, JFK more skirt chasing (see Clinton, William Jefferson). Carter was more of a Captain Bligh-esque bumbler with respect to people, LBJ more of a wheeler-dealer fixer, Nixon more a paranoid man uncomfortable in his own skin, and Obama is more Louis Farrakhan light. All the corruption and White-baiting, half the calories!

Think of this way. In what looks like a tough election battle, Obama chose to speak in front of Al Sharpton's National Action Network, to kick off his re-election campaign. Rather than say, announcing we are staying in Iraq and will be taking Iraqi oil now as payment for liberating Iraq (he's Obama, the Press will eat it up) to make oil cheap now! Obama has near unlimited range of action, given the press overt worship of him as a god that walks among us. Yet he's chosen Al Sharpton as his re-election opener.

11 comments:

The USDA represents the oldest and whitest part of the Democratic machine- farmers. Something has to go and this should be privatized anyway. Farm subsidies are an obvious thing to cut but I doubt they will go that far.

The USDA represents the oldest and whitest part of the Democratic machine- farmers. Something has to go and this should be privatized anyway.

Can't disagree. But it's probably one of the few things government does with some degree of efficiency and that people actually find useful. Hopefully US agriculture will do exactly what you suggest.

It underscores Obama's spoils-system politics and complete ignorance of the real world. He probably thinks magic cows swim over from Africa and evil capitalists hijack them to the slaughterhouse so they can take their cut. Otherwise, dem magical cows would skin deyselves and jump on da grill.

The price of something only matters to the person who is paying. Obama’s core political support comes from the non-payers in our society. This includes non-taxpayers, people who don’t buy insurance, people who live substantially on government benefits, people who work for the government in financial transference type jobs, and other assorted surplus mouths, etc.

Health insurance reform is a classic example. Nothing in the Obama Care PPACA did anything to lower the cost of health care. It was all about regulating the insurance laws and tax code to allow the uninsured access by getting someone else to pay. One reason health insurance is to expensive it that nobody has any incentive to keep the cost down with a third party payer system. Nothing in the PPAGA corrected this. In fact, it will probably be worse. Obama and his ilk tried hitting two birds with one stone. Not only did he attempt to extend government benefits to his core supporters but he was trying to get his political enemies to pay the bill.

"Obama further, acts like a wealthy Black rapper, ostentatiously displaying wealth, consumption, and glitz ... This display goes over very well among Black audiences, whom Obama has courted his entire political career. "

I am reminded of that photo of Idi Amin smirking as four White British Businessmen carry him in a litter in front of a crowd.

Like Amin's audience, many Blacks and "Latinos" seem quite content to live under dysfunctional regimes so long as the regimes' figureheads share their race. It really is that important for them to strike back at their "oppressors", even if they can only do it vicariously through "Afro American" elites like 0bama and Holder. Both of whom can barely be considered either African or American and have little in common with DeMarcus Six-Pack.

Nevertheless, I think that this particular incident is more due to his indifference than malice. As I mentioned on the prior thread, 0bama like many "Blacks" seems easily bored, has no attention to detail, and is ignorant of any political or economic matter that is not racially charged. Remember: this is the man who lived from credit card to credit card before his financiers bailed him out. The "genius" who still doesn't know what is and is not covered by a typical car insurance policy. The "Con Law Expert" who in a major speech confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence (imagine, if you will, Palin doing this and what the media reaction would be).

His handlers in both the US Senate and State Senate realized this and learned to work around it - crafting legislation themselves for which he could take credit, despite his being wholly ignorant of Political "sausage making". He simply is not a politician in the mold of the Clintons, Reagan, Roosevelt, etc. Possibly due to low intelligence (he still hasn't released his transcripts, so it's a near certainty he had no better than a "C" average. Pretty remarkable for an Affirmative Action student who could have gotten easy A's in College/Law School "soft" electives.)

Getting 0bama to care about the USDA is like teaching a dog to write a symphony. Likewise any other "non-sexy" admin agency; recall the article on Drudge some months ago about dozens of offices 0bama has left unstaffed. Because agricultural issues are just not as "sexy" as, for example, Justice Department stuff (protecting Eric Holder's "people" from whitey), he is AWOL and crazy policies like this one are hatched. After his reelection, which is all but assured, he will have no incentive whatsoever to put effort into his job, so expect the situation to get worse before it gets better.

quote:"Along the lines of "you might want to think about a trade-in" to a citizen complaining about high gas prices, Obama is not even trying to provide any economic buffers or patronage beyond his core group of College Educated White voters."

One of the Liberal approved trade-in cars is of course the all electric tax payer subsidized Nissan Leaf, which BTW looking at the sales numbers has been an epic FAIL.

But of course I don't expect Liberals to give up. The electric car to a Liberal is like national health care they're going to keep on trying and trying until they successfully force it upon us regardless of the cost.

If you can't afford $3.70 gas well that still doesn't excuse you from your obligation as a tax payer to subsidize every Nissan Leaf for $7,500.what?You don't like it.too bad!It's your fault for failing to understand that deep down inside that the Liberal establishment is trying to help you out.

Whiskey, someone like Trump running and splitting the vote was inevitable given that the GOP are totally incapable of producing a real alternative.

The reason being that the GOP aren't actually opposed to what the usurper and treasonous dems are doing, see Pelosi reaching out to repubs to create a pact against the people. Priority for the GOP is now accepting this pact as discretely as possible.

Victory for the tyrants is certain in 2012, they won't even have to cheat. The Republic is dead, get ready for the dark ages, the time for violence came and went years ago.

Only a Cromwell can save us now and his arrival is about as likely as the GOP nominating a genuine conservative.